THE WAY I SEE IT

Bob Capehert’s piece on the health of the G.O.P. made some good points.

We live in challenging times, which create challenging politics.

I can’t say whether Capehert’s analysis means a better Republican Party, but I agree panic over Romney’s loss was extreme — decoupled from the historical realities of American politics.

And I would add I think pundits comments on the demographic challenges facing Republicans are also overblown.

More significant it seems to me will be the detachment greater swaths of the American public have to private, mediating associations — associations, which limit citizen’s desire to have government grow ever bigger.

Note the disparity between young single women in comparison to married woman in election results. Single woman tend to vote for big government (statist candidates) — married woman, rather, vote far more often for classical liberal candidates given a choice.

Single woman are more prone to buy into statist slogans like: government is the one thing we do together, since the only sense of community in their lives is often government.

It seems those are far more worrisome to classical liberal ascendency than is demographic concerns.

Still, it must be admitted — the more successful voters become the more they tend to vote to “limit” government in one-way or another.

The impoverishment created by run-away Obama economics will create larger scale financial woe. It is simply the law of bad economic policy.

If Republicans do no better at communicating the predicament of the nation, and individual Americans locate themselves in, voters will continue to pull the lever for Democrat candidates promising government fixes which create more severe fiscal dislocation.

Hard to tell where the Republican Party is going ideologically. Capehert did not focus on that. Positive developments seem to indicate some positive changes in relation to foreign policy.

Several young libertarian Turks occupy the Senate on the Republican side of late. All seem principal-driven; all communicate a much more effective classical liberalism quite clearly.

The big question is the base of the Republican Party. Will the base understand that being constitutional means being far more like Senator Rand Paul than Rick Santorum.

Can Republicans like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz win enough support to win the Republican nomination for president against Santorum/Bachmann type Republicans too many conservative confuse to be constitutional?

There does seem to be movement in a positive direction.

But the Republican establishment will not quit easily. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie also desire to throw their hats in the ring.

And depending on whether Christie and Bush decide to run — and how men like Cruz and Paul deal with such challenges, future events will decide where the G.O.P. is headed, ideologically.